


always the love, always the hours

by atlantisairlock



Category: Military Wives (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Backstory, Bisexuality, Character Study, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Minor Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:16:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27491083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Lisa has six tallies. She meets Kate Barkley, and ends up with a seventh.Soulmate tally alternate universe; companion fic.
Relationships: Kate Barkley/Lisa Lawson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	always the love, always the hours

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Foolishly Forget](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27414388) by [ensorcel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/pseuds/ensorcel). 



> me: i'm going to write a simple companion fic to ensorcei's excellent kate/lisa soulmate tally au fic : )  
> me: [ accidentally spends two days churning out a 15k monster of a fic that's half lisa backstory slash character study + half actual companion fic ] oopsie! 
> 
> i need a life.
> 
> if you can guess where all the OC names came from, you win a special prize! 
> 
> title from the hours (2002).

Lisa gets her first tally when she’s fourteen. It’s a little younger than the usual, especially for a tally that immediately shows up black, but she’s not so young that it’s any cause for concern. She knows who it stands for the morning she wakes up and finds it on her wrist, anyway.

The boy four houses down the street - Ryan - is funny and kind and charming; both his parents are English, grew up in London, but he was born in Australia and he spent his childhood in a dizzying array of countries around the world. He’s a year older but they’re in the same grade at school, what with his having to catch up with the school system after having spent the past two years in a drastically different one in Indonesia. They walk home together after dismissal - sometimes they stop for an ice cream and he always pays for her despite her protests. He grins at her like it’s no hardship and she’s helpless but to grin back. He tells her fascinating stories about experiences he’s had in places halfway around the world. Lisa hangs on to every word.

The day after her tally appears, Ryan meets her at the front gate after school like it’s any other afternoon, only this time his smile is wider and he slips his hand in hers as they head home. They get ice cream, and Lisa holds her cone in one hand, keeps the other in his the entire walk back. He kisses her cheek when he drops her off at her front door and she smiles all the way until she goes to bed that night.

Five weeks later, on just another ordinary Monday afternoon, he sits with her on a bench outside the school gates and tells her his parents are moving again, that they’ll be heading off to Korea in a week because of company business, whatever, things that still fly above both their teenage heads - it doesn’t matter, because all it means to Lisa is that he’s leaving. He hugs her while she cries, then buys her a double scoop of coffee ice cream instead of her usual one when they walk home. It’s her favourite flavour, but after that, she switches to strawberry.

He doesn’t say goodbye face to face on his last day in London; she gets home from piano class to a letter shoved through her mail slot and an empty house four doors away. She cries in her room for hours, more angry than anything else. She reads it over and over all that afternoon, then shoves it in the back of her drawer and doesn’t pull it out again. She doesn’t write back.

It’s not until years later, older and wiser, more tallies on her wrist and more love found and lost, that she realises he was as heartbroken as she was, and that was why he couldn’t bear to see her one last time before he left. She wonders how long he spent every day in Korea waiting for a response, how long it was before he gave up - how many new tallies he has on his wrist like she does.

She never forgets.

She doesn’t forget a lot of things.

She doesn’t get another tally until her second year of university, her first year majoring in Music after dropping Business. She meets Natalie in her elective language module, both of them studying French - Natalie because she’s got hopes of eventually pursuing a career in Paris; Lisa because French seems a little less daunting than German (or Arabic or Mandarin, with their whole new alphabets), and a little because she still remembers Ryan talking about Brittany being his favourite place he’d lived in, afternoons spent fishing by the coast and enjoying fresh oysters shucked by his mum, telling her he’d bring her there someday. It’s him she’s thinking about when she sits down for her first class, until Natalie takes the seat beside her, shoots her a dazzling smile, and extends her hand for Lisa to shake.

It takes an entire semester for the second tally to appear. Lisa sits with Natalie in every lecture, studies with her some weekends, both of them sharing notes and sweating over their assignments, but it’s friendship first and friendship only for a long time. She’s not sure what changes and why, only that one night she glances over at her right wrist while slaving over her essay for her Music in Culture 2 module, and there it is - a neat black line, a second tally right beside her first.

They’re all mostly in their early twenties, her fellow students, most of them still bright-eyed and curious with big dreams, still thrilling over every new black tally they ever receive. Lisa’s no different. When she goes to her French lecture the next morning she gravitates to Natalie’s side immediately, smiling so wide it hurts, excited and happy. She wants to know how long Natalie’s had _her_ tally, when it turned from red to black. She wants to invite her out for lunch after class - and they’ve shared lunches before, of course, but this time it’ll be different.

Only Natalie freezes up when Lisa shows her the marks on her wrist, turns away from Lisa and back to her notes, shoulders hunched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lisa stops and blinks, bewildered; her gaze drops to Natalie’s right wrist and the single black tally there before she covers it with her left hand. “But I - “

“You’ve got it wrong,” Natalie interrupts firmly. “That’s not me. And that’s - “ She tightens her grip around her own wrist, shaking her head. “That’s not yours.”

“Of course it is,” Lisa insists; she hasn’t made a lot of friends on campus, certainly hasn’t spent as much time with anyone as she has with Natalie. There really aren’t any other options that would make any sense. “They’re both black, Nat, what do you mean - “

“I’m not gay!” Natalie yells. It’s loud enough to turn some of their classmates’ heads. She looks caught between terrified and furious and Lisa doesn’t know what to do. “That’s not your - just go away! Just leave me alone!”

Heart in her throat, at a loss for any other options, Lisa does. It’s humiliating to take the walk down the steps of the lecture hall, away from her usual seat, settling somewhere in the front instead. She can feel every pair of eyes on her, and it takes all her strength to set her bag down, lay out her notes, and just stare straight ahead until their lecturer arrives and begins the class.

Her black tally remains, doesn’t change, even as Natalie ignores her in the corridors and never speaks to her ever again. Lisa knew it wouldn’t - black tallies stay forever until they become scars, even if the love fades away, but she wishes they didn’t. It feels like a cruel mockery to have the mark linger.

Every time she sees Natalie in French the next semester, she’s got a bracelet over her wrist and it makes Lisa queasy every time she notices. She eventually drops French because she wants to focus on her actual Music modules. Or at least that’s what she tries hard to pretend; it’s not like there’s anyone around her to call her out on it anyway.

Lisa throws herself into her studies for the rest of her time at university. Tallies don’t appear for anything but romantic love for another person, but Lisa thinks that if the definition of _love_ was expanded a little wider, made a little more abstract, she’d have carried a tally from the very first time she touched a piano and it would never, ever scar. Her degree is hard work but she loves every single minute of it. This is what she wants to do.

One of her fellow Music students invites her to join his band midway through her second year. It’s a casual affair, involving four other Music students ranging from second-years to fourth-years, all keen on pop and soft rock, meeting once a week to jam together and just enjoy their music beyond the confines of their academics. It’s nice, a welcome weekly relief from the perpetual onslaught of assignments to complete and exams to study for.

Her final year comes around and the band gets an offer to provide live music at one of the bars near campus - just a once-weekly affair, playing for patrons a few hours every Thursday night. It’s pretty decent money, they all agree, and Lisa makes time in her schedule in between working on all her final electives and researching her dissertation.

The bar is where she meets Red, who turns out to be a semi-frequent customer alongside his Politics and History classmates. He catches her eye while she’s on her keyboard, playing the melody to Bette Davis Eyes. She likes the grin he gives her when she joins him at the bar after the band’s set, likes that he’s smart and well-spoken and that their conversation flows like water.

He’s her first red tally (she doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to be her only). She finds herself lingering longer after playing sets on Thursday nights, chatting with him by the bar, the hours slipping away without her realising. She notices early on that his right wrist is blank - it’s uncommon at their age, but not unheard of, and she doesn’t want to be rude, so she doesn’t bring it up. Not at the beginning. Not after she gets home at 2AM one night, still smiling stupidly after a lovely few hours spent sitting in the gardens talking about life with him, and finds a red mark on her right wrist while she’s washing her face.

Two months after the first time she sees him in the bar, her tally goes black; she’s exhilarated when she calls him up and asks to meet after class. She gets to the little cafe right on time, sees him at a table for two, but when she makes her way over to it, expecting to see his wrist _finally_ marked with a neat black line, her gaze catches on the familiar blankness below his palm and Lisa feels herself go cold.

It doesn’t make any sense, at the time. She knows it like she knew with Ryan, with Natalie; there’s no other option. The tallies never lie, and neither does the way his expression lights up when he sees her, the softness to his smile when she sits numbly down in front of him and greets her by name. “What’s up? Why did you want to see me so suddenly?”

Lisa just turns her right wrist up so he can see her tallies, too dazed to say anything more. His brows draw together in momentary confusion, then he looks up at her face, and she doesn’t know what he sees, but he gently takes her hand and brings it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “Is that third one for me, then?”

“You don’t have any,” says Lisa - _you still don’t have any._ Red nods, his shrug casual but deliberately so. “Never have. Not when I fell in love, not even when my feelings were requited. I don’t know why. I’ve never been able to find an explanation.” He smiles at her and it’s bright, and real, and familiar. “I’ve always called it a blessing.”

“A blessing?” Lisa can hardly believe her ears. The tallies have always been a guarantee for her, a mark of certainty about her feelings and those of the person she’s fallen for. Even if both times it’s ended in tragedy. She never needed to wonder, she only needed to grieve, and she doesn’t know what she would’ve done if she’d had to suffer both.

Red still hasn’t let go of her hand. “I think so,” he says. “It’s always meant I made my own choices when it came to love. I’ll never know the bitterness of having only red tallies. Never know the agony of the scars.” He says that like he’s known someone who has, seen it for himself and realised the alternative was preferable. “I don’t need a line on my wrist to be sure of how I feel about you, Lisa.”

She doesn’t hesitate when she leans across the table to kiss him. Shudders and cries, stupidly and embarrassingly, when he kisses her back. He comes over to her side of the table and pulls her into a warm embrace and doesn’t care when she gets his shirt wet with her tears. He loves her, tallied be damned, and that’s all that matters to her.

Red applies to Sandhurst a month before they both graduate, as he’s always intended. He’s got a proper ten-year plan and all of that; it amuses and impresses Lisa in equal measure. She’s less clear about what she really wants to do. She enjoys writing and composing; she’d like to be a producer someday, maybe, and work with a major label, but nothing’s really certain. She loves music but she knows the industry’s a difficult one to break into, even harder to survive in. Red’s the kind of person who values stability and security, the kind that the Army, with its regimented bureaucracy, can offer. Lisa’s not so sure she can achieve that in the industry.

It kind of becomes a moot point a week after Red sends in his application, a week after she submits _her_ dissertation and finishes her last elective assignments ever, when she throws up three mornings in a row. The first time she thinks it’s because of the three-day-old kebab she ate for breakfast (honestly, it probably is, a little bit), but by the third morning when she’s sitting on the floor of her bathroom feeling awful, she does some calculations in her head and comes to a slightly concerning conclusion.

She greets Red at the door with the positive pregnancy test when he comes over for dinner that night. The solid twenty seconds of facial calisthenics he goes through would be hilarious if her own head wasn’t in such a whirl. The first thing he does when he finally takes it in is hug her tight. “I’m glad you told me.”

“Obviously,” Lisa says, shutting the door behind him and tossing the test on the drawer, keeping her arms around his neck and holding on tight. “What are we going to do?”

“Do you want to keep it?"

She nods; she’s spent the whole day thinking about her options, and there’s a lot of uncertainty about the whole situation, the precarity of their incomes, but the one thing she knows for sure is that she loves Red, he loves her back, and that she can see a future with him. She’s never been averse to the thought of motherhood; the idea of having a baby is scary but it’s not _unwelcome._ Red sighs and kisses her forehead. “You’re going to be a great mum,” he says softly, sounding sure - and then, less sure after - “Lisa, do you want me to withdraw my application to Sandhurst?”

Lisa draws back, confused. _“What?_ Why would I want that?”

“It won’t be an easy life,” he points out. “The training alone is 44 weeks. That’s longer than you’ll be _pregnant._ And after that…” Red trails off, pushing her hair behind her ear and looking right at her. “I want to be the best dad I can. I want to take care of you - both of you.”

She can’t help but laugh, happy, relieved, and already the pregnancy seems less daunting. “You will,” she promises. “You’ve always wanted to enlist. You know I’d never ask you to give that up for me. We’ll figure it out. As long as we’re together, it’ll be okay.”

She’s still so young, then. Not yet cynical, not yet jaded, not enough years lived and difficulties faced and disappointments and bitterness on her shoulders. She’s still riding on the high of submitting her dissertation, on the hopeful certainty of graduating with a First; she has three tallies on her wrist and a man who loves her holding her close and promising her his heart and his faith. It feels like everything is possible, like this is her happy ending.

It’s only just the beginning, but she doesn’t know that yet.

Red moves into her small flat after his application to Sandhurst is accepted. It’s mostly in name since he’s basically there all the time except for term breaks, and Lisa keeps house and looks for jobs while he’s in training.

The search doesn’t go well. Jobs in the industry are competitive, demanding, and she doesn’t get a lot of responses to the dozens of applications she sends out. It’s not an easy pregnancy either; morning sickness plagues her for weeks on end and it’s _miserable_ the whole fourteen weeks of Red’s second term at Sandhurst. He returns on his break just a couple days before her projected due date, and by then she’s seriously exhausted and so incredibly done with being pregnant. Rationally she knows that actually raising a child is going to be a hundred times more difficult, but it’s hard to really feel that when she’s always tired and nauseous and feeling generally shitty.

Frankie takes her own sweet fucking time coming out into the world too, which really does not help; Red stays by her side the whole fifteen hours and lets her nearly break his hand squeezing hard when the contractions are particularly bad. He’s the one that bursts into hysterical tears when the nurses lift Frankie into Lisa’s arms; Lisa’s really a little too exhausted from the whole process to do that or to laugh at him.

But then she looks at Frankie for the first time, tiny and squirming and shrieking her head off, and it feels like her heart expands; she doesn’t know how her chest continues to cage it. She’s always wondered, a little bit, how Red could be so certain about loving and being loved back without the tallies giving him absolute confirmation, and for the first time she finally, completely gets it. Frankie isn’t a tally on her wrist but Lisa loves her, immediately, instinctively, without reason, would die for her, kill for her, no hesitation. She’s the most beautiful thing Lisa’s ever laid eyes on, and Lisa knows she’ll never love anyone like she loves Frankie. Not even Red.

Two weeks after Frankie’s born, Red goes back to Sandhurst to finish his officer course. He’s in tears leaving them at home and Lisa has to practically drag him out of Frankie’s nursery because he spends ten minutes leaning over her crib telling her ‘bye-bye’. “You’re a bigger baby than Frankie,” she teases, kissing him on the cheek as he heads out. “And yes, for the last time, I’ll be fine. It’s just fourteen weeks.”

“Let’s get married,” he says. “When I get back, before I get assigned wherever I’m going. I want you and Frankie there with me, no matter where it is.”

Lisa rolls her eyes, but she can’t stop smiling. “That’s the least romantic proposal I’ve ever heard.” She kisses him soundly and he laughs. “Well?”

“Yes, you idiot, let’s get married. But you better go on one knee when you get back. And I want a ring. Even if it’s a mood ring, I’m not picky.”

“I’ll get you the prettiest one in the toy store,” he promises, both of them laughing as she punches his shoulder lightly. “I love you. Be back soon. Be careful.”

“You too,” she murmurs, and watches him go.

Fourteen weeks fairly fly by, mostly because Frankie takes up absolutely all of her time. For how difficult carrying her was, she’s not a total terror of an infant. Noisy, of course, and demanding Lisa’s attention almost every minute of the day, but not more than Lisa really feared. It does interfere a lot with job-hunting, though. Excepting the band, she doesn’t have a lot of friends, and even they are all over the place - Beatrice back in her native Scotland, Ravi having gone straight on to a Masters in the US, Zee across the pond in France, and Lauren hopping around the Antilles of all places doing god-knows-what - so asking them to watch Frankie for a couple hours while she swings by a job interview isn’t exactly feasible. She’d hire someone, only the whole point of trying to get a job is because her bank account is dipping into figures that are beginning to stress her out.

By the time Red gets back, by the time they have a very efficient courthouse wedding and move onto the base where he’s assigned, it’s been almost six months and Lisa makes a decision. Red’s job is going to be difficult and demanding. Frankie’s so little, and there’s no way Lisa’s leaving her in a stranger’s care for long periods of time until she’s walking and talking at the very _least_.

“You sure?” Red asks for perhaps the fifth time as they’re unpacking the last of the boxes in their new home on the base. “I know how much you love music. We can figure something out, Lisa.”

“I’m _sure,”_ she says patiently. “Frankie needs someone at home with her, and anyway, it’s not like she’ll be a baby _forever_. My degree’s not going anywhere. There’ll be time for me to look for a job later.”

“It’s going to be hard leaving her every morning,” he says mournfully. Lisa snorts. “You’re so dramatic. You come back every night at 6PM. But if that’s an offer to take her every evening so I can put my feet up until bedtime, I accept.”

Red stills his hands over the box he’s opening. “I won’t be back every night at 6PM if I’m sent on tour.”

“And we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lisa replies promptly, because she knows _that_ , but she doesn’t really want to think about it until she has to. “Will you pass me those photo frames? I’ll go put them up in the living room.”

The proverbial bridge rushes up to meet them far sooner than Lisa expects. Frankie’s just turned one when Red’s called up for a six-month tour. She’s just started going ‘da-da’ reliably when she sees Red and Lisa can tell the news breaks his heart.

“It’s not that I regret enlisting,” he tells her, and Lisa hugs him. “I know. I don’t regret marrying an enlistee either.” She rests her head against his chest, listens to his heartbeat, steady and reassuring. “You just come back to us, okay? And we’ll be waiting for you.”

He kisses her forehead, then links his fingers with hers, raises her wrist so he can brush a kiss to the tallies there too. “You’ll take good care of yourself, yeah? Send me letters, and pictures. And stop feeding Frankie sweet potato, she hates it.”

“Just because you’ve got horrible taste in potatoes doesn’t mean our daughter has to follow suit,” Lisa snorts. Red laughs and Lisa takes the sound, buries it deep, so she won’t ever forget it.

Red deploys, leaving her to figure out six months on her own. It’s not too bad, once she adjusts to waking up and going to sleep alone. It’s not the first time Red’s been away for a significant amount of time; six months is a lot longer than fourteen weeks, but it’s not completely unbearable, especially since she’s got Frankie so she’s not _alone._

With Red away, she takes on all the things he was doing; groceries in town, taking the car in for checks and maintenance in accordance to the schedule Red meticulously drew up. It’s nice, actually; she hadn’t realised how much time she spent in the house and on the base until she finds herself lingering in an aisle at Tesco’s in town, enjoying the variety and taking her time to decide what brand of chips she wants to treat herself to that week.

She starts spending more time out of the house. Frankie is getting more curious about the world around her anyway, head turning and fingers stretching out for any novel thing that catches her eye, and Lisa encourages it. When the grocery list is short, she parks further away from Tesco’s and takes different routes to and fro, letting Frankie see new sights.

It’s how she finds the playground, a month or so in. Frankie babbles happily when Lisa puts her in the swing meant for babies and gives her a few pushes; it’s adorable. She lets Frankie keep swinging, and movement from her right catches her eye; another little girl, older than Frankie by at least a few years, maybe three or four, runs up to the normal swing beside Frankie and tugs insistently on it. “Daddy, Daddy, I want to swing too!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” says a handsome young man, following behind her with a bright purple knapsack over one shoulder. He helps her onto the swing and makes sure she’s holding the ropes tight before giving her a good push. She swings her legs up in the air, shrieking delightedly, contagious enough to make Lisa laugh too. Her father turns to her with a smile, and Lisa flashes a smile back. “I guess they never get too old for this,” she says, to his answering chuckle. “Tell me about it. If there was an adult-sized swing I’d probably be right on there with Em.”

That makes Lisa laugh, properly, and it breaks the ice. By the time Frankie gets tired and starts fidgeting and clamouring to go, they’ve exchanged names and introduced their respective daughters, and Ian’s even given some tips on how to make Frankie more amenable to starting solids. It’s a nice afternoon out, and Lisa makes a note to herself about the route; she’ll definitely come by the playground again.

She doesn’t go into town every day, or even every week, but she starts stopping by the playground when she does, at Frankie’s babbled behest, and Ian’s there too more often than not. She learns it’s because Em has a regular Friday schedule that coincides with Lisa’s grocery runs; Ian picks her up from daycare after work and takes her for a milkshake, then to the playground, then back home. It’s a way to spend as much time with her as possible, to establish a routine that she can count on. Ian’s a single dad, a year younger than Lisa, has been raising Em on his own since birth, and juggling it all is hard. Lisa admires him for it; she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t know how.

She tells him that, when they’ve become close enough that Lisa would call him a friend, after weeks upon months of afternoon meetings in the playground chatting about everything under the sun while their daughters play. He visibly startles. “Oh - I thought - “ His gaze drops down and it takes Lisa a second to realise it goes to her left hand, her fourth finger ringless ever since Frankie started getting crawly and grabby and Lisa decided she really didn’t want to risk having her swallow it by accident or something. Ian swallows with an effort and chuckles, shaking his head. “Sorry, I’ve spent the past few months assuming you were also a single parent; that was really presumptuous on my part. Sorry.”

He smiles at her, looking embarrassed, but Lisa sees a flicker of something more. He raises a hand to adjust his glasses and Lisa catches sight of two black lines on his wrist.

She hasn’t paid attention to her tallies in two years now, not since Red held her hand in a cafe and told her he didn’t need a tally to be sure that he loved her. Her life is packed full with being a mum and a wife and when she finally really properly looks at her right wrist for the first time in months, she realises she never knew how much four tallies looked like three.

They both sit in silence for the rest of the afternoon. Lisa leaves earlier than they usually do because it’s unbearable and because it gets harder and harder to breathe the more she thinks about it. She says a brief goodbye to Ian and Em when she puts Frankie in her pram and heads off, and the look on his face tells her he knows they won’t be seeing each other again.

She goes home, prepares dinner. Puts Frankie in her high chair and feeds her until she’s done. Leaves her to play with her toys on the carpet in the living room while she washes her dishes, and then cries as she dries them by hand. She reads all of Red’s letters, carefully stored in her drawer, cries again until she’s ready to go to sleep.

When Red gets home a month later, she waits until he’s changed, unpacked, bundled Frankie into a bearhug and had his fill of playing with her, putting her to bed and kissing her goodnight. He smiles non-stop until she dozes off, then shuts the door to her room, takes Lisa’s hands, and looks her in the eye. “What’s wrong? You’ve been so quiet ever since I got back. What happened?”

Two years ago she answered a similar question of his by showing him her tallies; she does it again now, feeling as numb as she did then. Red just looks at her wrist, then wordlessly pulls her closer so she can cry and apologise, over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know how it happened, I didn’t want it to happen, I didn’t - I never - the moment I realised I stopped talking to him and I haven’t seen him since then and I don’t want - I won’t, ever, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says, far more calmly than Lisa ever imagined he’d be. “Shh, hey. Lisa. It’s okay. Just calm down, okay? Come on, let’s sit down. Tell me all about it.”

She does, sniffling her way through it, and Red just holds her hand, strokes his thumb against her wrist. She finds herself apologising again after she’s done and Red shushes her. “You know I don’t care about the tallies,” he says. “I’ve never had one and it _never_ stopped me from finding you and falling for you and building a life with you. I chose you, and tallies or not you chose me too. That’s all I care about.”

“Okay,” she says shakily, letting him embrace her and not let go. “Okay.”

He strokes her back, and she holds him tight, waits, because it feels like he isn’t done. Finally he exhales quietly, a little pained, speaking like the words hurt him to say. “I know the tallies mean something to you, and to basically everyone in the world who has them. I know I’ll never really be understand what it’s like to get one, red or black. I - “ He stops short, working his jaw, and Lisa waits. “If ever - just - Frankie. Frankie has to be your first priority, _our_ first priority, no matter what. Promise me.”

That’s not even up for discussion; Lisa knows she’d always choose Frankie over Red, over herself, that Red would too. “Always.”

He kisses her forehead and squeezes her hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

Red doesn’t do another tour until Frankie’s five. Lisa doesn’t gain another tally until two years after that, after meeting one of Frankie’s teachers, one Lottie Hatch. She teaches music at the primary school level, and turns out to have done the exact same course as Lisa, only several years before Lisa enrolled in university. Talking to her about it is nice, and awakens something in Lisa she didn’t even realise she’d buried. Frankie talks about music class sometimes and Lisa realises, a little vaguely, that her old keyboard’s still packed up somewhere in the attic and she hasn’t played a tune in years. She feels a pang in her heart when she thinks about it, but then Frankie clamours to eat pancakes for dinner and Red, as ever, indulges her, and they all end up in the kitchen with Red whipping up some amazing batter with his special recipe and Frankie drowning her stack in maple syrup and Frankie tells them all about her day, and Lisa decides to stop thinking about it. Frankie’s her first priority, something she promised Red, something she settled on the moment Frankie was born. She doesn’t regret it and she never will.

It doesn’t mean it’s not fun and enjoyable to meet Lottie for tea one weekend, outside of school hours, and talk about music - the bands they like, current favourite songs; what they did respectively for their final-year dissertations, comparing university experiences. She’s lively, fun, talks with her hands, and Lisa blames the fact that she hasn’t fallen for a woman in almost a fucking decade for not realising how close to the danger zone she is until she tips right over into it.

They get matching black tallies at almost the same time; to hear Lottie tell it her red tally goes black less than forty-eight hours after it appears and she knows. It’s Lisa’s fifth tally; it’s Lottie’s ninth, but her first black one.

It’s not like Lisa didn’t rationally _know_ some people’s tallies would never go black; all her bandmates back in university had a red tally or two. She was the sole exception until Red came along, and even then it went black two months later. Lottie doesn’t even look sad when they meet up at the little cafe near the school with the good chamomile, just brushes her fingertips lightly against the lines on her wrist with a small smile and a decisive shake of her head. “Well, at least it adds a little variety.”

“I’m really sorry,” says Lisa. Lottie is beautiful and brilliant and dedicated to her work; she’s an incredible contralto and plays the flute like a dream. If Lisa de-ages them both ten years, she can slot Lottie right into her university life, doing vocals with Zee while the rest of the band played, staying up late to slog over assignments by Lisa’s side. Lottie could’ve been the right person for her, years ago. All else in her life laid aside, she still is. It’s just the wrong time, and Lisa knows all too well that right person, wrong time, is still wrong person.

They make the sensible decision to stop meeting outside a professional environment, though Lisa’s not so blind nor insensible that she doesn’t see how much it hurts Lottie to agree to it. It ends up becoming a non-issue anyway; Frankie moves up a grade, Lottie doesn’t follow, and a week into the school year Red gets news about a promotion or a move of some sort, and six months later they’re shifting furniture into their new lodgings in Flitcroft. It’s a bigger garrison; their house is bigger too, with a proper garage and a garden. Frankie squeals with delight at her new room, massive as compared to her previous one, and Lisa thinks about new beginnings and fresh starts. She’ll be okay.

Red goes on another tour not long after they settle in Flitcroft. Being left at home is different this time - the garrison is further from town than the previous base was and it’s not really feasible to pop down every time she feels a little shut-in, and now that Frankie’s in school she needs a lot more of ‘coming home to do her homework’ instead of little outings into town. Eventually she decides to just… get out there and meet more of the other wives, socialise a little. They’re all in the same boat, anyway; Lisa’s sure they can get along.

One of her neighbours, Samantha, helpfully directs her to one of their coffee mornings and introduces her to some of the other wives, most of whom take an immediate shine to Lisa. Lisa, in turn, gets along well with almost all of them, but Samantha most of all. She’s got two children, both younger than Frankie, and she’s endlessly proud of them. Lisa finds herself imparting advice on child-rearing in a manner that reminds her, suddenly and painfully, of Ian. She takes a steadying breath, shakes it off, sternly reminds herself that Flitcroft is meant to be a new start - but perhaps in hindsight it should have been a sign.

She learns from her previous mistakes and is careful not to spend too much time alone with any of the wives she comes to really like, Samantha inclusive. She knows her own heart better now and she knows how easy it would be, especially with how much lonelier she gets in Flitcroft than she did on the previous base, Frankie growing up into her own person and needing Lisa less and less.

It turns out to be too easy, anyway, and falling for Samantha is nothing like it ever was with any of Lisa’s previous loves. Quieter, subtler, slipping into her life like a shadow and staying. Maybe she’s growing old. She’s genuinely surprised when she finds the sixth tally on her wrist one evening. She’d never believed you could fall in love over glances exchanged across a room in the welfare centre, or group conversations at the chippy with the other wives, or -

The tally is black from the start but Samantha doesn’t bring it up the next time they see each other and after battling with her indecision, Lisa doesn’t either. They’re both mothers, so she understands the silence. Samantha can’t pick Lisa over her children, simple as that. What they both want can’t happen. End of story.

They still talk, here and there - always when they’re surrounded by the other wives, always in public. Still friends of a sort. Lisa feels more grateful than bitter about it, and chalks that up to growing older too. She can have this, and it’s okay, it’s good enough, and she can settle. And from the looks of it, Samantha can, too.

Samantha’s husband Oliver is serving alongside Red, now on his third tour. He pops up occasionally in Red’s aerogrammes home, but that’s not how either Lisa or Samantha get the news. Samantha gets a call - always heart-stopping, even if they all know that news of bereavement comes in person - and the news passes in hushed whispers at the next coffee morning. Career-ending injuries. An honourable discharge. They all know what that means.

The wives organise a small farewell gathering for Samantha before she leaves the garrison. She hugs them all and promises to stay in touch. She gives Lisa a quick hug too, then glances around at the other wives milling about the room before discreetly slipping her a letter. “Read that when you’re at home, okay?” Her fingers linger against Lisa’s wrist, over her tallies, for just a moment, and then she’s stepping away. “Bye, Lisa.”

She leaves the letter for two days, by which time Samantha is miles away and never coming back. It reminds her too much of Ryan, years and years before, how she has no idea what’s happened to him since they were teenagers and how she never will unless (until) his tally becomes a scar. When she finally plucks up the courage to read it, she waits until Frankie’s at school before sitting in the back garden, away from prying eyes, and breaking the seal.

It’s a short letter, handwritten and earnest. A lot of it is what Lisa wishes she could have said - would have, if things had been different, if the timing had been right.

And the last paragraph -

_I’m sorry we never talked about it. I think I was too afraid. Oliver was my first tally. That will always mean something to me. But what I wanted and who I loved fifteen years ago aren’t the same fifteen years later. If it wasn’t for my children, I would have asked you. And if you’d asked, I would have said yes. The kids come first for me and I know Frankie does for you. But you’ll always be on my wrist and in my heart, Lisa Lawson. If we ever cross paths again, I hope we can be friends._

Lisa reads it, then reads it again, and again, until the words blur into each other through her brimming tears. From the corner of her eye she can see the six neat lines on her skin, under the hand shaking as it holds Samantha’s letter. She thinks about falling in love with Ryan and Natalie and Red, years ago, saying _yes_ to Red in the ways that mattered and believing that would be the end of it, until Ian and Lottie and Samantha found their way into her life and turned it upside down each time, the difficulty that came with righting it again. It hits her, abruptly, that she’s tired of feeling this way, of feeling like she’s being forced to choose Red, struggling with it against her better judgment. She wonders if he’s ever fallen for someone else since they got married. Wonders if he’d even know, if he’d ever be sure, or if he could just choose - she’ll never know. In a world where heart and history are laid bare on skin, made clear for the world to see, she will simply never really know.

She carefully folds Samantha’s letter and slides it back in its envelope, goes to the garage and rummages through the boxes until she unearths the teenage diary she shoved Ryan’s letter in the very first time she moved out. She places Samantha’s letter beside it, touches her fingers to her lips and presses them against the paper. “No more,” she whispers. Six black tallies is more than enough. She made a choice. She can cut out her heart for it. She can be a wife and mother. No more than that.

Years go by.

Life falls into a holding pattern in Flitcroft. Wives in the garrison come and go. She makes friends, and to her surprise she eventually becomes known in the community for being everyone’s mate. A position at the convenience store opens up when Frankie starts secondary school, and Lisa applies for the hell of it because it’d be nice to have something to occupy her time and bring in a little extra cash. Red does two more tours - Lisa worries every time he leaves and hugs him tight every time he comes home.

Her tallies stay at six. The seasons change, Frankie grows taller, Lisa gets older, and her tallies stay at six. She breathes a little easier every year.

When Frankie is seventeen, Kate Barkley barges her way into Lisa’s life and fucks absolutely everything up again.

Okay. It’s not completely true that Kate enters Lisa’s life only when Frankie turns seventeen. She’s been in the garrison for years, longer than Lisa or indeed most of the wives she knows; she’s been on the periphery ever since Red was posted to Flitcroft and Lisa followed. She’s never been the sort to join in with whatever activities the other wives were doing and nobody really seemed to be her _friend,_ so Lisa just… never really bothered. If anything, she could be a little of a condescending dick the rare few times they crossed paths, Kate coming into the store when she urgently needed something or another that she’d forgotten to pick up from her long, leisurely drives to town. Lisa’s spent eight years in Flitcroft mostly ignoring Kate, rolling her eyes at her back when Kate exits the store, and nothing more. Kate’s seemed pretty happy with that status quo too. _Until_ Red gets made RSM and Lisa is suddenly thrust into a role with more responsibilities while he’s off in Afghanistan and Kate decides she’s going to be king shit of fuck mountain.

And, look - Lisa’s no fool, and they _all_ heard about what happened to Jamie just six months ago. Some of the wives tried to offer sympathy and help and got soundly rebuffed, and Kate’s been walking around with her head high pretending like nothing has changed, but a lot of them are mothers. Lisa can’t even let the thought of losing Frankie flit through her mind without wanting to scream and punch something. Kate sticks her nose in where she wasn’t invited, barely hides her irritation when Lisa snarks back at something ridiculous she says, but there’s a brittleness to it. Lisa sees it. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s gracious about it, because really Kate can be _so fucking annoying,_ but she does realise where some of it is coming from.

Lisa knows it’s why she’s so insistent on the choir. Lisa _knows_ that when she storms off after their disastrous first ‘practice’ and Kate chases after her talking about how she might not need the choir but the women do, that by _the women_ she really means herself, even if she can’t admit it. She acts like a haughty know-it-all with a massive stick up her arse and Lisa loathes her and despite that, despite all that, she watches Kate walk away after calling her out on sober karaoke and Lisa’s tendency towards disorganisation, and goes home, opens up YouTube, and starts searching for more information about professional choirs.

The deeper she goes, the more some of it feels achingly familiar. Choral music wasn’t really her area of interest in university but some of the articles she reads and videos she watches stir echoes of long-buried memories. Writing a song or two, back with the band. Learning to play by ear and deciding it worked way better for her than sheet music. She goes to the garage and unpacks her keyboard before she can think better of it. The thing’s practically caked with a layer of dust and Lisa chalks it up to a miracle that it still works when she plugs it in, but the moment she depresses the keys and plays a chord it all seems to come rushing back.

“Huh,” she murmurs, feeling a smile curve its way up her face. “A choir. Okay.”

They start slow, almost painfully so. The choir fumbles. Kate continues to cross swords with her. Time and again Lisa misses the fuck out of the band and how seamlessly they seemed to come together. She was so young then, god, just a few years older than Frankie, and it’s hard to believe now that she was ever that green, with far fewer tallies on her wrist.

She throws herself into arranging music for the choir in her efforts to better it, have the women come together with more cohesion and sound _decent._ Sometimes it feels like she’s back in school all over again, and she gets caught up in it - so caught up one night that she doesn’t realise Frankie’s broken curfew until she looks up at the clock half an hour before midnight and finds five missed calls from Kate.

Kate offers to let Frankie sleep it off on her couch, which is surprising and sweet, then makes a pointed comment about Lisa’s alcohol consumption, which is less so on both counts. She doesn’t respond when she leaves, though, too wracked with the guilt beginning to twist tight inside her gut. Frankie’s her priority; Frankie’s always been her priority and is always supposed to be. Lisa gave up loves and ambitions for her and it feels like failure, or betrayal, to have her passed out drunk on Kate’s couch.

She confronts Frankie about it the next day when she arrives at practice. Frankie snaps back at her and leaves Lisa speechless as she disappears into the next room to childmind for the next hour. In her mind’s eye she sees Frankie, still little, still growing up, the only thing she could count on as a constant while Red was away for months on end - Frankie needing her and Lisa needing her back. She can’t remember when that changed and she doesn’t know how to fix it.

The choir, at least, starts to come together. Time passes and Kate’s tongue is still sharp and she’s always got this tone in her voice when she talks to Lisa that she doesn’t have with any of the other women, but they figure out a rhythm in fits and starts. More compromise, more patience. The choir sounds better and better at every practice. Kate smiles more often when she conducts them through a good run.

One afternoon they do a really _really_ good round of Don’t You Want Me, Lisa revisiting it after their first ‘sober karaoke’ practice, and Kate laughs delightedly when they finish, eyes wide and bright. It startles Lisa and makes her look at Kate, really look. Kate looks back and her grin shifts into a smaller smile, less outwardly joyful, but she gives Lisa a respectful nod and Lisa finds herself smiling too.

It helps having the market performance and the Royal Albert Hall to work towards. She and Kate work out how best to drill the women, how to help Jess along with her solo. Two nights before the market, a group of them are seated outside Lisa’s house, Kate bent over the papers strewn across the bench, talking them through logistics and timetables and final reminders. Lisa looks at her and feels like she really sees, for the first time, determination instead of stubbornness, discipline instead of rigidity, passion and earnestness and brilliance instead of arrogance. She doesn’t think Kate loves music or performance or the choir the same way Lisa does but she’s dedicated and devoted and Lisa realises she can find things in that to respect.

It’s a lot more than respect - if not then, it _becomes_ a lot more than respect pretty damn quickly and unexpectedly.

She doesn’t mean for it to happen; when of any of her tallies save Red has she meant for it to happen? And it doesn’t feel like it did with anyone before. She’s never disliked or hated any of the people she’s fallen for when she met them for the first time. She’s never had to learn and relearn them, figure them out over time, see beyond surfaces, see sides of them they don’t show to anyone else, love them not despite their weaknesses but because -

They’re talking about Jamie outside the bar, in the cold, Kate telling Lisa things she’s never heard Kate mention. Her voice grows distant, she shifts further from Lisa before finally getting up to leave. Lisa feels a chill of disappointment, a sudden longing for her to sit back down and keep talking to her, and as she looks down at her hands, an unmistakable black tally begins to appear beside her sixth.

Lisa looks up in shock. Her gaze darts over to Kate, zeroing in on her right wrist as she starts to walk away. Her watch is further down her arm than it usually is and Lisa’s lived almost forty years never having seen a tally actually changing colour right before her eyes, but there it is. Bright red going dark, and how did she never notice? Kate wearing an assortment of bracelets and watches at every single practice the past few months. Always on her right wrist even though they were on her left before. She never paid attention because it was never supposed to matter.

But now -

“Kate!” She calls, not sure what she’ll even say if Kate turns back, but Kate doesn’t. Lisa can feel her heart pounding and the overwhelming urge to run after her, to pull her back.

But Lisa’s tally is _black._ Kate had a red tally - had it for god knows how long because now that she thinks back Lisa can’t remember seeing her without her right wrist covered for weeks, maybe months. She knew. She must have known. And she never said.

 _You know why,_ says a voice in Lisa’s head, and she does; it really doesn’t take a genius. But she still lies sleepless in bed all that night reevaluating every conversation they’ve had since they started working on the choir together. Every moment they shared. Things Kate said to her in annoyance and irritation and impatience seem to take on a different dimension, or maybe she’s just projecting, because she wants them to have meant something, because she wants - she doesn’t _know_ and it’s the first time since Red that she’s been uncertain about a black tally and what it means for her and her choices, her future -

She’s going to talk to Kate about it. She decides that at three in the morning before finally passing out from sheer exhaustion after staying up all those hours. She’ll go around to Kate’s in the morning after Frankie goes to school, before choir practice in the afternoon, and they’ll talk about it. They’ll figure it out, whatever figuring it out might mean.

When Lisa wakes up again the next morning, Richard and Liam are dead, and that, of course, changes the whole fucking plan.

Crooks calls her, asks her to go to speak to Sarah, because she needs someone - she’d asked for Kate, but that’s obviously not an option, and it’s pretty clear Lisa’s seen as the next best thing. It’s a little disconcerting. Ruby and Jess have always been better with stuff like this than her, so Lisa eventually decides it’s best to just call up the rest of the choir and head to Sarah’s place together.

She can’t stop thinking about Kate the entire day, even after she gets home from Sarah’s. Can’t stop worrying. They’d just talked about Jamie last night and Lisa can’t imagine it, can’t imagine being left alone like that.

Kate’s got her tally on her wrist and that’s supposed to mean something. It’s _always_ meant something to Lisa and she knows it must mean something to Kate if her insistence on watches and bracelets is anything to go by.

 _I’m coming over,_ she finally texts Kate; she doesn’t expect a reply and doesn’t wait for one, just pulls her coat on and heads for the door.

She’s almost put one foot past the threshold when she hesitates. Her glance drops to her wrist, to the seventh tally she’s still getting used to. Conflicting emotions war inside her for a minute before she heads back in to grab a watch and loops it around her wrist.

Kate covered her tallies for months. Kate kept silent. Kate’s husband is dead and Lisa doesn’t want to think about a scar beside her tally on Kate’s wrist. Doesn’t want Kate to see seven black lines on her own. Hell, when she thinks about it, she doesn’t really want Frankie seeing them either and asking questions.

Might as well start getting used to it.

Kate’s a fucking mess when Lisa gets there; Lisa would be more surprised if she hadn’t been. She practically collapses into Lisa’s arms and cries, she doesn’t stop crying, and Lisa eases both of them onto Kate’s couch and just holds her. It feels right in a way that instantly makes Lisa feel sick with herself. She buries the feeling as deep as it will go and just lets Kate cry it all out. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says softly. “I’m here.”

“He wasn’t supposed to go,” Kate sobs. “Why did he go? Why did he leave me? Why does he get to see Jamie, and I don’t?”

Lisa feels her breath catch, like Kate’s words have punched the air from her lungs. There’s so much pain and despair in Kate’s words and it physically hurts Lisa to hear it. “Kate. Please don’t say that.”

“Why? Why can’t I say that?” Kate lands a few unsteady hits against Lisa’s legs and Lisa just grabs her hands tight so she stops, so she slumps back against Lisa’s shoulder. Her tears have stopped, mostly, though her breathing is shaky. Lisa just keeps stroking her hair as soothingly as she can manage. She wants to kiss Kate, but she doesn’t.

“Please don’t leave me,” Kate eventually mumbles, right before passing out. Lisa gently lays her on the couch, ignoring how fast her heart is beating. She sends a text to Frankie, telling her she’ll be at Kate’s for the night, then curls up in her armchair in the most comfortable position she can manage and goes to sleep.

She wakes up almost right as dawn breaks with a pretty bad crick in her neck; Lisa stifles a groan as she stumbles off Kate’s armchair. Definitely not conducive for a restful night. She doesn’t regret it, though. Kate asked her to stay, and she stayed. She’s still asleep, which isn’t surprising - she must have been exhausted after yesterday. Lisa checks her watch and decides to make her some breakfast so she can get something to eat once she wakes up.

The problem, of course, is that Lisa’s not terribly skilled in the culinary arts - there’s a reason why Frankie’s breakfast is usually a mishmash of different cereal brands - and Kate doesn’t have a lot in her fridge either. She can’t even find any bread, and anyway a brief inspection of Kate’s toaster reveals it to be some sort of ridiculous as-seen-on-TV monstrosity with more buttons than a calculator, so Lisa decides to stay away from it. Eventually she puts the kettle on to make some instant coffee, and chances it with some fried eggs. Can’t be that hard; she’s seen Red make them. Sometimes.

Kate wakes up sometime while Lisa’s scrambling to flip the second egg in the pan and failing pretty miserably. “What on earth?”

“You’re up!” Lisa says, turning to Kate. Just for a second, though, it seems a bad idea to take her eyes off the pan of burning and/or burnt eggs for too long. Kate sounds absolutely confused, but not upset or annoyed or sad, like yesterday, which is already a relief. She comes closer to peer at the carnage on her stove. “What on earth are you doing?”

Lisa grins sheepishly at her. “Making breakfast?”

A beat, then Kate laughs, a sound reminiscent of the time the choir aced Don’t You Want Me. It’s lovely and amused and lifts Lisa’s spirits and makes her smile. She decides to throw in the towel on the eggs and just take Kate out for breakfast. It’ll be good to get her out of the house anyway. “This isn’t edible. I’m taking you out to eat.”

Kate’s still smiling as Lisa lifts the pan off the hob and scrapes burnt egg into the garbage, then puts it in the sink to soak. She’ll wash it when she and Kate are done with breakfast and come back to her place. By the time she’s done, turning back to Kate to ask her where she wants to go, Kate’s face is a frozen, still mask again, and Lisa feels her heart drop.

Kate tells her to leave, and Lisa doesn’t know what she’s done wrong this time. For a moment things were - not okay, but Kate was smiling, Kate was laughing, and last night Kate asked her, in her own words, to stay, and now she won’t meet Lisa’s eyes when she tells her to go.

“I’m sorry I burned breakfast,” Lisa tries, reaching out for Kate’s arm. Her visible flinch has Lisa drawing back again, bewildered and heart aching. “Please go.”

Lisa goes. She doesn’t know what else to do.

The choir goes over to Sarah’s place again later that afternoon to keep her company; Lisa joins them after two strong coffees and a change of clothes. Sarah tells them about Liam, sweet stories, funny stories, makes them all share their own too so they can all laugh, so the atmosphere in the house won’t be nothing but horrible gloom. Sarah laughs and she sounds like she means it, but she still ends up breaking down in Hilary’s hug while talking about the last date she and Liam ever went on before he was deployed, and Lisa’s heart is heavy as she thinks about Kate alone at home.

She walks back in silence with Jess and Annie and Maz and Dawn afterwards, until they reach the crossroads where they’ll split up. Jess stops her before they do with a hand on her elbow. “Lisa, we have to tell you something.”

Jess sounds serious and Lisa braces herself for more bad news. “What is it?”

The four of them exchange glances, looking unsure. “The choir was talking,” Annie finally says. “We were thinking we shouldn’t do the Albert Hall. It just seems…”

“Bit crass,” Maz offers. “To ask Sarah and Kate to do that just a month after, well. So we were thinking it'd be best to pull out.”

“Right,” says Lisa. She exhales slowly, not sure how she feels about that idea; her thoughts are all jumbled up, focused on Kate at the moment. “Okay. Let’s talk about it at practice tomorrow, yeah? Think we should talk to Kate about it before we make a big decision like that.”

There’s a murmur of general agreement, and they say their goodbyes as they make their individual ways home. Lisa stands and looks down the diverging path she knows leads to Kate’s place and considers it for a minute.

_You can leave now._

_Please go._

Lisa sighs, a shaky exhale, and turns away. Heads back to her own front door.

Kate ends up convincing the choir to stick with the Albert Hall. Lisa sees the desperate panic on her face when she asks them if they’ll do it, almost a demand, a plea, and for the life of her, Lisa could never say no.

Sarah asks the choir to sing Ave Maria at Liam’s service and of course Lisa can’t say no to that either. They’ve only got a few days to learn it and make it perfect but they’re all willing to, so Lisa carves out a few hours in the three days leading up to the service for them to meet and practice every day.

“Will you be singing at Richard’s service?” Crooks asks them when Lisa speaks with him about where they’ll stand in the church and when they’ll sing; it gives them all pause. All the women turn to Lisa and she takes a second to find her voice. “Kate hasn’t told us anything about what she wants.”

Crooks sighs. “She hasn’t really told any of us. The boys in charge have taken to just… doing it like Jamie’s was done.”

The choir stands for a while in silence, struck by the sudden, sombre reminder that it’s barely been a year since Jamie died. Lisa tries to imagine Richard’s service, cold and quiet, officers bearing his coffin into the church. Tries to imagine Kate’s face while it happens.

“I think we should do it,” Ruby finally says. “The choir’s important to Kate. If it could help her in any way at all - we should. What's the worst that could happen?”

Lisa could think of a few things, but the rest of the wives slowly throw in their agreement and Crooks looks to her for the final vote, and she decides it's best to just nod along. “Right,” he says. “Then we’ll put you all in for both.”

Kate doesn’t attend Liam’s service. Her eyes are unfocused, red-rimmed, at Richard’s. Lisa’s not sure she actually hears the choir sing, or the guns fire at the salute, or anything, really. She accepts the brigadier’s condolences with a quiet, polite thank you and a completely blank expression, and she’s the first to exit the church. Lisa goes after her without thinking about it, catches her by the shoulder. “Kate? Where are you going?”

Kate doesn’t answer. Her silence is worse than all the condescending, passive-aggressive barbs she slung at Lisa months ago when they weren’t on as good terms. Lisa tries again because she can’t bear to hear it. “Kate, please. Let me come with you. You shouldn’t be alone right now.” 

“Just let me go,” Kate responds, toneless, and Lisa’s response just slips out, unthinking, before she can stop herself. “You asked me to stay.”

She feels Kate go still where her hand rests on her shoulder. Her fist is clenched tight. Lisa can’t see her tallies under her watch. “Please forget I said that,” she says, and Lisa suddenly thinks of Red, and his insistence on love being a choice, on their relationship being a choice. Of Natalie pushing her away, of making the decision not to see Lottie again. The tallies are gifted to them, but they don’t define their lives.

 _She doesn’t love me, she doesn't want to,_ Lisa thinks, a flashbang of clarity, a lightning strike that cleaves her heart in two. “Kate - “

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. She walks away, and this time Lisa lets her.

Frankie’s on the couch reading Red’s latest letter when Lisa gets home. Lisa sees one of the aerogrammes on the table addressed to her and it’s suddenly hard to breathe, to swallow. She doesn’t pick it up, just sinks into the couch next to Frankie and tries to think about anything but Kate, standing in the cemetery, asking her to leave.

She feels Frankie’s eyes on her, eventually, even though she’s got her aerogramme in her hand and is reading it for all means and purposes when Lisa turns to look back at her. She lowers it to her lap. “How’s Kate?”

“Grieving,” Lisa says after a long pause, and nothing else. She doesn’t know what she can say that won’t have Frankie asking questions she can’t answer.

There’s another tense silence until Frankie leaves her letter on the coffee table and gets to her feet. “Can you text Kate for me? Tell her that I’m coming over.”

“What? What for?”

“Just to talk,” Frankie shrugs. Lisa remembers with a little sting that Frankie and Kate get along well, maybe even better than she’s been getting along with Frankie for a while - that Kate might open the door for Frankie where she closed it on Lisa, even though she’s on Lisa’s wrist, not Frankie’s. She fights to keep her expression neutral. “Okay. Text if you’re going to be back late. Call me if you need anything.”

Frankie hums in acknowledgment and heads out, leaving her in an empty house.

Lisa doesn’t expect a call at all, honestly; her age and temperament as it is, Frankie barely rings her while she’s out unless she’s wanting some cash or a ride. So it’s a little surprising when her phone rings half an hour later, showing Frankie’s name on the screen. Lisa picks up. “Hello?”

“Mum! Mum, help,” she hears, and her surprise shoots straight to terror in under a second. “Frankie?! What’s going on? What happened? Where are you?”

“No, I’m not, I’m fine, it’s not me, I’m - I’m at Kate’s, I’m in her bathroom, she’s - Mum, she’s bleeding, there’s so much blood, I don’t know what to do, _help me - “_

She’s already reaching for the landline to call 999, her heart pounding. “Okay. I’m calling an ambulance and I’ll be right there. Stay calm, okay? Frankie, stay calm. Breathe. It’s going to be okay.” She’s on the verge of a panic attack herself but both of them freaking out isn’t going to do anybody any good. “Did she slip? Did she hit her head? Is it a head wound? If it is, _don’t_ move her, whatever you do, it could kill her.”

She hears Frankie’s ragged gasps; she sounds like she’s crying. “No, it’s - it’s not her head, I think it’s her arm, or her wrist, she’s got - yeah, I think it’s her wrist, her right wrist. Her tally, one of her tallies, I’m - I’ve just got a towel, I’m trying to stop - there’s so much - “ Frankie breaks off with an uneven, terrified sob. “Mum. I think she tried to kill herself.”

Lisa’s blood turns to water in her veins, roaring in her ears, drowning everything else out. She barely hears the landline connecting. “999. What’s your emergency?”

“Frankie, I’m coming,” she says, then numbly rattles off Kate’s address to the operator. What she says she’s not altogether certain; words and meanings seem to jumble together into a horrible mess in her head as she wedges the handset between her ear and shoulder and grabs haphazardly for her coat, her keys, her wallet. The second the operator tells her an ambulance is on the way she thanks them, hangs up, and rushes to the car.

The drive to Kate’s usually takes five minutes but Lisa’s there in two minutes flat; she’s pretty sure she violates every traffic code in the book but she really does not care. There’s an ambulance in front of Kate’s gate by the time she parks by the side of the road and an EMT stops her as she tries to get in. “Miss, I’m sorry, you can't come in, we’ve got a - “

“My daughter’s in there, my _friend’s_ in there, I made the 999 call,” Lisa shouts. “Just let me in, please, I - “

“Mum!” She hears Frankie’s cry and stops; Frankie breaks away from where another EMT’s escorting her out and flies into Lisa’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Lisa holds her tight and thinks she’s never ever going to let go again. She sees some paramedics stretchering Kate and loading her onto the ambulance. “They’re taking her to the hospital. They said I couldn’t go with her, we’re not family - “

 _She doesn’t_ have _any more family,_ Lisa thinks, tempted to shriek it. She doesn’t, just runs back to the car on the other side of the road. “Hurry, get in. We’ll follow them there.”

Kate’s been rushed into surgery by the time they get to the hospital, park, and rush to the front counter. Nobody will tell her or Frankie anything more, repeating again that they’re ‘not family’. Lisa sits Frankie down in the waiting area, puts her coat around her, and then calls Crooks to tell him what happened so he can go up the top brass if he needs to and figure out how to get the doctors to tell Lisa exactly where Kate is and what condition she’s in.

Surgery takes about three hours; Crooks and whoever else is involved at Flitcroft take about that long to figure things out back there too. She’s sitting in the waiting area fielding barrages of text messages from the choir when a nurse approaches them and calls for her by name. Lisa looks up sharply. “Where’s Kate?”

“Kate Barkley’s been warded, Miss. She’s not awake yet but you can see her.”

“But she’s okay?” Frankie asks, looking drawn and haunted. Lisa squeezes her hand tight when the nurse nods. “She’s going to be fine. She should be waking up soon; no more than twenty-four hours, if that. If you would follow me - “

 _Thank god,_ Lisa thinks, as they’re led into a quiet room where Kate lies still on the bed. She looks peaceful, almost. Like she could just be sleeping, if not for the telltale bandage around her wrist. Lisa feels a knot in her throat, hot tears pricking her eyes. She’s alive. Lisa doesn’t know what she would’ve done if she wasn’t.

“She was very lucky you arrived when you did, Miss Lawson, and you had the presence of mind to staunch the bleeding,” the nurse tells Frankie. “Five minutes would have made a great deal of difference.”

“Five minutes,” Lisa repeats dully. Five _hours_ ago she and Kate were watching Richard’s service; five hours ago Kate walked away from her and Lisa let her and if not for Frankie it could have been the last time she ever saw her. She’d have been sitting on her couch and staring at the ceiling and thinking of nothing and maybe not noticing her wrist until hours later, by which time she would’ve had six black tallies and a scar -

Panic bubbles up in her chest; Lisa reaches over to pull her watch strap down so it doesn’t cover her tallies and checks as discreetly as she can. Seven lines, as they’ve been for over a week. All black. No scars. Almost, it could have happened, but it didn’t. She’s alive. Kate’s alive.

Lisa sends Frankie home after another hour; it’s getting late, she’s still got bloodstains all over her shirt, and she looks this close to crashing after the stress-fueled adrenaline of the afternoon. Annie comes down to drive her and put her up for a night, because there’s no way Lisa’s going home until Kate opens her eyes, and she doesn’t want Frankie alone at home tonight. Technically visiting hours are ending, but someone up there in the top brass manages to swing it so that Lisa’s allowed to stay overnight. Hospital personnel brings a recliner in for her and sets it by the window so she doesn’t need to spend the night in a chair, but Lisa stays right by Kate’s bed until the wee hours anyway, praying Kate wakes sooner rather than later.

Sometime during the wait she finds her hand slipped firmly in Kate's, holding tight. She keeps Frankie and Crooks and the choir updated, texting with one hand. Frankie crashes by eleven and Annie follows soon after, but not before making Lisa swear to call her if Kate awakens in the night so she can drive Frankie down. When the flood of concerned messages finally stops, the rest of the choir turning in after Lisa promises to update them if anything changes, she sets her phone aside and looks at Kate. She looks at Kate for a really long time.

“You fucking idiot,” she finally murmurs. She’s so tired and drained, the exhaustion beginning to seep into her bones. “You better wake up soon. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

 _I love you,_ she doesn’t say, but she thinks it, again and again, and doesn’t stop thinking it until she drifts into sleep.

Lisa gets about four hours of sleep, startling awake when a nurse comes in to check on Kate and brings some water for when she wakes up. It’s thankfully not too long after that when a soft moan from the bed makes Lisa snap to attention. Kate stirs, movement beneath her eyelids; Lisa feels her heart leap. “Kate? Kate, can you hear me? Kate, can you open your eyes for me?”

Kate makes another hoarse, raspy noise, her eyes opening just enough for Lisa to see her wince at the sudden exposure to light. Lisa smiles wide, desperately relieved. “Hey, sleepy-head,” she murmurs, struggling not to let her voice break on it. _She’s okay. She’s alive._

Kate tries to speak; Lisa stops her, taking the cup of water the nurse brought and bringing the straw to Kate’s lips. “Drink. You’re thirsty.” She waits until Kate’s taken a long sip, some light beginning to return to her eyes, before she speaks again. “Do you remember what happened?”

There’s a pause while Kate comes back to herself; Lisa sees the exact moment it all flashes before her eyes, when she remembers. Her free hand, the one Lisa isn’t holding, goes to her mouth; she looks horrified, wrecked. “I - “

“Shh,” Lisa murmurs. “You don’t need to say anything.”

“Lisa, I’m - “ Kate’s eyes are rapidly filling with tears, her breathing quickening. Lisa shushes her again; best if Kate calms down before Lisa calls in the nurse and goes to update everyone else. “It’s going to be okay.” She rubs Kate’s hand, slow and steady, until Kate’s breaths slow again and her eyelids lower. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Okay,” Kate mumbles. Lisa squeezes her hand, hums softly until Kate eases back to sleep - a more natural sleep this time - then goes to call the nurse.

Annie and Frankie come down half an hour after Lisa calls, with Helen, Ruby and Crooks in tow. They collectively browbeat her into going home for a shower, a change of clothes, and some proper food. “You need it,” says Helen, in a tone that brooks no argument. “We’ll call you if anything happens. Just go home, shower, change, eat, and then you can come back.”

She obeys mostly because she’s still too tired to protest. There’s a ready-to-eat meal in the fridge and Lisa sticks it in the microwave so it’s ready by the time she gets out of the shower. She’ll make it quick - get clean, new clothes, just get some food in her system, and then she’ll be back by Kate’s side in no time.

Only - she goes to the bathroom, takes off her watch and her shirt, and catches sight of her tallies. Her thoughts from last night flood back in a rush, spotlit with greater clarity in the light of day. Seven tallies. It was almost six and a scar - and Kate, Kate has a scar. Kate has a scar and a black tally, and and yesterday she almost succeeded in making the two match -

An animal noise wrenches its way out of Lisa’s throat, her legs giving way under her. She clutches her wrist and presses her forehead against her fist, trying to swallow the awful sounds coming out of her mouth. It’s like a dam giving way in her heart, everything that’s been building and building just pouring out. Lisa’s lost people she’s loved before, had black tallies come to nothing, and she lives every day with the ever-present fear that her husband might not make it home from war, but the thought of losing Kate, of having come so close to losing Kate, makes something splinter inside her that she’s never felt, never thought she was capable of feeling.

She sits on the bathroom floor and cries for a good thirty minutes, unable to stop; she only does eventually because her phone buzzes and she finds a text from Ruby. _Kate woke up again, asked for you then went back to sleep, are you on the way back?_

 _30min,_ Lisa shakily taps out in response, then pulls herself off the bathroom floor and stumbles into the shower.

Kate’s still asleep when she gets back; Ruby informs Lisa that she just woke up for a minute before dozing off again. The doctor tells them it’s a fairly normal side effect of the blood loss and that she should be back to normal soon enough.

The rest of the choir drops in and out over the rest of the day; Crooks heads off pretty early telling them he’s got a couple of people gathered to go clean up Kate’s bathroom before she gets home. Kate keeps coming to consciousness for a few minutes, always a little dazed and not really herself, before falling asleep again. Lisa gets a lot of concerned ‘are you okay’s and waves them off with a smile she hopes is convincing.

At the end of the day, Ruby and Dawn offer to stay with Kate for the night so Frankie and Lisa can both go home. Lisa declines; she can’t even fathom leaving Kate for the night. Frankie hugs her and returns with Annie again, promising to come back first thing in the morning.

Lisa gets a little more sleep that night, a little less worried now that Kate’s regained consciousness. It’s enough reassurance that she relents to stepping out and getting them all some drinks when Frankie and Annie come by again the next day. Annie comes with her when they go to the cafe downstairs. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I wasn’t the one who found her, Annie. Ask Frankie that question.”

Annie gives her a sidelong glance and Lisa feels a chill for a second, discreetly checking her right hand to make sure her watch is looped tight around her wrist. She’s pretty certain none of the wives have seen her new tally, or Kate’s, let alone figured out what they mean. She doesn’t know what Kate would do if they found out; she’s already made it so clear she can’t bear its existence. Lisa steadfastly doesn’t follow up the conversation, and they get drinks and head back in silence.

Kate’s awake when they return, talking to Frankie. She smiles tremulously at Annie, who goes over to squeeze her hand. “Don’t ever scare us like that again, Kate.”

Kate smiles what might be assent. Lisa looks away.

A doctor comes in to give Kate a checkup later in the morning; hours later she gets the all-clear to go home with instructions on how to change her bandage, keep her wound clean, the usual. Lisa gets pulled aside for a whispered conversation urging her to keep an eye on Kate and watch out for any follow-up attempts on her life, which she was going to do anyway.

“Can you do one more night with Annie?” Lisa asks Frankie quietly after that conversation. “Just one more night, I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

“Are you staying at Kate’s?” Frankie narrows her eyes at her. “Can’t I stay with both of you?”

Lisa swallows, glancing back at Kate on the hospital bed listening to the doctor give her a final checkup. “Not tonight, okay? There’s some things I need to talk to her about. Please, Frankie? Just trust me.”

Frankie regards her with a long look, then finally nods. “Fine. I’ll see you in the morning.” She pauses and her gaze shifts to Kate too, softening. “She’ll be okay, right?”

“I hope so,” Lisa murmurs. “I really do.”

Kate’s quiet all the way back to her place. Lisa keeps looking over at her every few minutes, wanting to say something, then faltering. Now that Kate’s out of danger, now that she’s going home, it’s like all these walls are back up and she doesn’t know how to ask the questions on the tip of her tongue.

Kate’s the first one to break, when they get back. Lisa helps open the front door and Kate stops on the step. “Why are you so calm about this? Why aren’t you mad at me?”

 _Calm,_ Lisa wants to scoff; outwardly, she just looks at Kate as neutrally as she can manage. “Do you want me to be mad?”

Kate’s face falls, something flickering across her expression, her voice high and stressed. “I - oh God, I - “

Lisa reaches for her hand without thinking about it, holds on tight and leads her into the house. “Come on, Kate. Let’s just… get to bed.”

Kate shakes her head, stubborn, looking desperate and terrified. “Why haven’t you _asked_ me anything? Why aren’t you mad?”

Something seems to snap deep inside Lisa, a fissure reaching its breaking point. She has seven tallies under her watch on her right wrist and Kate has two under the bandage on hers - or one scar and who knows what Lisa’s tally looks like now, after Kate put a razor blade through the skin and tried to carve it out of her. “Jesus Christ, Kate! You almost fucking _died,_ and you want me to be _mad?_ Kate!” The words just spill out, something she can’t contain. “You scared me _so bad._ Why did you try to cut out my tally?”

Lisa sees Kate freeze, breath dying on her lips. It’s a long few seconds before she can reply. “How did you - “

“I’m not an idiot,” Lisa says wearily. She takes Kate’s hand in hers, fingertips brushing over the bandage. Kate follows her movements with her eyes. “Then - why did you cover yours up?”

 _Because I was scared,_ Lisa thinks. _Because all my tallies have ever brought me are unhappy endings and tragedy. Except Red, or even Red, now, because I’m his wife and it means I don’t think I can ever be yours. Because you covered yours first and I thought I knew what that meant. Love is a choice, and I thought you decided not to choose me._

“I didn’t want Frankie to know,” she says instead, which isn’t completely a lie.

“But - “

Lisa’s suddenly exhausted, again; she doesn’t want to hear whatever Kate wants to say after that ‘but’. She just wants to hold Kate and to know she’s alive. “You scared me so bad,” she repeats, forehead pressed against Kate’s. “How could you be so stupid, Kate?”

“I’m so sorry,” Kate whispers. “I didn’t know. I thought - “

 _You idiot,_ Lisa thinks, _you idiot, I love you, I love you, I love you -_

Kate kisses her. Lisa kisses her back, and it feels like an answer to all the questions she’s ever asked and a few she didn’t know she had.

Not that much actually changes right after that. Red’s still in Afghanistan, Frankie doesn’t know about their tallies, and they both decide it’d be really bad form to blow it open, before he comes home, through a fucking aerogramme or something - that's just not on. The Albert Hall is _still_ looming despite all the excitement, and the second Kate deems herself strong enough to go back to practice, she’s putting them through all the paces once again. The whole choir spends an entire practice discussing what song to perform before they come up with the idea of doing their own song, and the practice stretches hours as they proceed to figure out how they’re going to write it before Jess mentions something Jules said in his letters to her and it’s like a lightbulb goes off over Lisa’s head.

Most everyone willingly contributes letters and lines for Lisa to work into the song. Kate doesn’t; Lisa asks, but she doesn’t push. All the other wives, Sarah aside, are providing material from letters they’re still expecting to continue getting; Kate’s never going to receive any more. If those words are hers and hers alone, Lisa respects that.

Pretty much all of her time gets swallowed up by the choir, the preparations for the Festival of Remembrance, working side by side with Kate, but she still finds a free day to go into town with Frankie and spend some mother-daughter time together. Their relationship’s gotten a little better in the wake of what happened to Kate, the trauma of it bringing them together, and Lisa’s not going to let that slip out of her hands again. They’re strolling down a row of shops downtown when the glint of gold catches her eye from a shopfront. Lisa pauses, and Frankie with her, while she studies the beautiful bracelet in the window. Very nice, and well within her budget.

“That’s lovely,” Frankie comments. Lisa smiles at her, imagines how it’d look on Kate’s wrist. “I think so too. Let’s go in and take a look.”

She intends to give the bracelet to Kate the morning of the Albert Hall; Kate scuppers that plan by coming over at one in the morning and waking her up right before their big day. Lisa would be vaguely annoyed but it’s _Kate,_ and her reason is obviously something Lisa can’t say no to.

She’s not surprised by Kate’s request, and honestly, she’d considered asking Kate about it at one point when she was struggling with songwriter’s block and needed _something_ to fill a gap. It’s easy enough to swap out the line she’d used instead with _till we laugh again,_ and after that’s done, she decides _fuck it_ and goes to get the bracelet. She watches, nervous, eager, as Kate opens the box and studies it. “Lisa, how - “

“For you to cover your tallies. When you want.” Kate smiles at that, wide and pleased and touched; leans in to kiss her. Her hand rests over Lisa’s arm, their tallies pressed together. “I love you.”

Lisa bites her lip, trying to quell the stupid smile spreading across her face. “I know, you idiot. Stay?”

The performance the next day goes off without a hitch. It’s fucking incredible. For the rest of her life she’s never going to forget what it feels like to stand on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall and sing to thousands of people watching in the audience, from their homes, around the world. She slides her hand into Kate’s during the standing ovation and beams back at Kate’s grin.

Kate stays over that night; it’s not even a question. She leans into Lisa’s side on the couch under the blankets after Frankie goes to bed. Lisa puts an arm around her and Kate catches her hand, gently running her thumb against her tallies. “Will you tell me about them?”

Lisa shoots her a questioning, uncertain look; _why?_ Kate brushes a brief kiss against her wrist and rests her head on Lisa’s shoulder. “I want to know everything about you,” she murmurs. “I want to know about your past, because I want a future with you.”

Something swells in Lisa’s heart, and she blinks away tears. “Okay,” she says shakily. Kate glances up at her to meet her gaze, cups Lisa’s cheek and kisses her softly, and Lisa kisses her back.

There’s - so much else to think about. She thinks Red will understand even if he’s angry with her but she’s not sure. She hopes Frankie won’t hate her forever - and god, Frankie’s still the most important thing in her life, always will be; she can see Frankie demanding her to end things with Kate and never see her again and she would have to do it. She knows she would. Between Kate and Frankie, no contest. And maybe Kate’s tally is black, maybe Lisa loves her this much, because she knows Kate would understand too.

Or maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay, and Red won’t hate her, and Frankie won’t hate her, and she’ll get to give Kate a happy ending she deserves, _maybe -_

And maybe it doesn’t matter. Things aren’t perfect. She’s always treasured the tallies because of the certainty they represent, and right now her life, her future, is anything but certain. She got her first tally when she was fourteen; it’s thirty years later now she’s got her seventh. It might be her last and it might not; for the first time in her life, Lisa doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. Kate is in her arms, in her heart, in her core, and Lisa will love her for the rest of her life. Tallies be damned. One true thing she’s sure about. The one thing that will always make sense.


End file.
